The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced the recall Tuesday morning. Tesla said the problem lies in the Universal Mobile Connector (UMC) adapters, which can lead to the adapter, cord or wall outlet overheating during charging. The danger was discovered when a garage caught fire in California in November. It has since resulted at least five incidents that were reported to NHTSA's complaint database.

"These are very rare events, but occasionally the wiring isn't done right," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, according to Bloomberg. "We want people to have absolute comfort, so we're going to be providing them with an upgraded adapter."

The new adapter will include a thermal fuse that will shut off charging if overheating is detected, Musk said. Tesla sent a software update to its customers to deal with the overheating issue back in December, which was designed to trigger a 25 percent reduction in charge current when it sensed a potential overheating.

Tesla said about 2.9 percent of Model S buyers have returned their UMC adapters because of defects

I like manual reset thermal switches for stuff like this. I was collecting them for years at IBM. We used to have engineering changes where they got swapped for a different temperature quite often and I put the old one in my pocket instead of throwing it away.I had one save me from a serious problem on my spa. I had a problem where a heater ran away and my thermal tripped it out at ~122f. I changed that to 110f because I decided that was even too hot.

If I had something like this I would have a thermal right on the charger.